ferment

To react, using fermentation; especially to produce alcohol by aging or by allowing yeast to act on sugars; to brew.

The cleanup job would turn out to be possibly second only to body-recovery duty in terms of being a job that nobody wanted to get assigned to. Imagine, for a moment, a thick soup of oil, paper, ink, clothing, raw meat and other fresh provisions, and worse, that had all been left to collect together in semi-warm water, all enclosed in a large metal container that had then been subjected to heating by first fire and then repeated warm Hawaiian days, and then left to ferment for over a month, and then with most of the water drained away and all the remaining solid and semi-liquid mass collecting together in pools and heaps across multiple decks, still in a relatively-enclosed environment.

To stir up, agitate, cause unrest or excitement in.

Ye vigorous swains! while youth ferments your blood.

Pleas'd have I wander'd thro' your rough domain; / Trod the pure virgin-ſnows, myſelf as pure; / Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burſt; / Or ſeen the deep fermenting tempeſt brew'd, / In the grim evening ſky.

Something, such as a yeast or barm, that causes fermentation.

A state of agitation or of turbulent change.

Subdue and cool the ferment of desire.

14 November, 1770, Junius, letter to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield The nation is in a ferment.

A gentle internal motion of the constituent parts of a fluid; fermentation.

A Rage of Pleaſure madden'd every Breaſt, / Down to the loweſt Lees the Ferment ran: [...]

A catalyst.